


Goes Both Ways

by bactaqueen



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Top Drop, confessions of pining, handjob, requiting the previously unrequited, slight angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2015-03-22
Packaged: 2018-03-19 02:35:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3593136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bactaqueen/pseuds/bactaqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve and Bucky take care of each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Goes Both Ways

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Recognizable characters belong to their respective owners. No profit is earned and no infringement is intended.
> 
> Author's Note: This was initially part of a much longer fic and I am now 100% sure I won't write it, but there's no reason for this to go to waste.

Head bowed, eyes closed, Steve slumped against the cold tile wall. The water beat down on him from above and washed over him from the sides, way too hot, and he was glad for it. Glad for the heat, glad for the steam, glad for the noise, glad for the closed bathroom door between him and Bucky.

Bucky, asleep in his bed.

Steve was used to the tears, but Bucky wasn't, and the last thing Steve wanted was for Bucky to see him like  _this_ .

He'd known it was coming. The moment Bucky said, "Please, Steve," he'd known this was how it would end. It was why he'd stopped doing it. But for Bucky? How could he say no to Bucky?

Photographic memory was a curse in moments like this, when he could recall the bruises he'd left on Bucky, layered over old scars, new and bright and blooming like nighttime flowers. It didn't matter that they'd all be gone soon--Bucky's version of the serum might have been the knock-off, but it was still nothing to sneeze at--because they were his. He didn't need to understand why Bucky had asked for the pain and the relief, though he thought he did, he only needed to know that he'd done good. He knew that. When he cleaned Bucky up and tucked him in to bed, he looked better than he had in all the months since he'd been back.

He'd looked content.

For that, Steve would do this as whenever Bucky asked, whenever he even hinted at it. Even if it led to this clawing, falling, empty feeling inside, even if it led to hiding in the shower--

Arms slid around him and lips brushed the back of his shoulder. He jerked and half-turned, and there Bucky was, looking far more serious than Steve wished he would.

He smiled a little. "Thought you were asleep."

Bucky gently turned Steve back away and pressed his body along Steve's. He kissed the back of his neck. "Was, but you didn't come back."

"What, you get lonely?"

"Guy cant help it when he misses someone." Bucky smiled against his skin.

Steve laid his arm across Bucky's over his stomach. "You need your rest," he said, because he knew Bucky hadn't been sleeping well.

Bucky tightened his hold. He kissed up the back of Steve's neck and down the shell of his ear and across his shoulders, idle, brushing kisses, until he could lay his cheek against Steve's spine. "You don't get to tell me what I need right now, buddy."

Steve warmed inside in a way the water and steam couldn't touch. He rested his hand over Bucky's and tangled their fingers. "Whatever you want, Buck."

"I know." He lipped the line of Steve's neck, not so much kissing as just touching. "I needed that tonight," he said softly, an admission. "Thank you."

Like it was scripted. Steve almost laughed. "Anytime."

Bucky shifted a little closer and loosened one arm around him. Steve could feel the long line of Bucky's body against his back, warm and solid and so familiar. Bucky stroked fingers warm and slow over Steve's belly.

"What do you need?" he asked softly.

Steve froze.

Bucky laid his cheek on the back of Steve's shoulder and waited. His fingers kept moving, slow nonsense circles over wet skin, and his arm around Steve's middle tightened a little.

Steve finally got his tongue to unstick. "That's not what this was about."

"Thought it was about both of us. You didn't get off."

Steve's instinct was to shrug, to dismiss it, but with Bucky's head against his shoulder he didn't want to dislodge him. He settled for squeezing his fingers gently. "I don't have to."

"Were you like this with them, too?"

Leave it to Bucky to know exactly what it was. Steve flinched. "Bad manners to talk about the others," he said, even though, with Bucky, there was no such thing as bad manners.

Bucky ran parted lips along Steve's shoulder and pressed his hand flat to Steve's belly. "I never minded your bad manners," he said. He slid his hand a little lower, the tips of his fingers touching the root of Steve's soft cock. He took a deep breath, shaky, and said quietly, "Don't be like this, Steve. Not with me."

Steve's heart skipped a beat and he turned in Bucky's arms. He gathered him close and kissed his temple and the height of his cheek. When Bucky turned his face up, Steve kissed his mouth and put a hand in his hair to cradle the back of his head.

Bucky pushed closer. He broke the kiss as he got one hand between them and slid it down the front of Steve, wrapped it around his cock. His cock, still soft, even though Bucky was warm and willing. Bucky held his hip with the other hand.

He kissed the edge of his mouth. "You get anything out of it at all?"

"Used to." Steve pushed his face into Bucky's hair and then lower, against his neck. His gasp was shaky. Bucky's touch was far more gentle than he'd ever given himself, ever gotten, and it was so unexpectedly good.

"What changed?" Bucky pressed, and he didn't stop, his touch light and exploratory even as Steve's cock began to fill.

Steve shut his eyes tight and laughed a little at himself. "No one cared." And that was the truth, wasn't it? At first, it had been fun--lots of fun that couldn't lead to ruined lives. And after the ice, in this bright new  _me me me_ world they'd either been too starstruck or too selfish.

Bucky turned his face and kissed Steve. "I do." He kissed him again, long and lingering and sweet. "Did back then, too."

But Steve still held back, torn between wanting for himself, too, and wanting to help Bucky.

Bucky stilled his hand and drew back a little. "But if you don't want--"

Steve kissed him. A broken sob spilled from his mouth into Bucky's and his face went hot with humiliation. He pressed his face to Bucky's neck to hide it. "I want you, Buck," he said roughly. "Always did."

Bucky shifted, resettling Steve's head on his shoulder, wrapping his hand around his cock once more. "You had a funny way of showing it." He turns his face, briefly, brushes his lips to Steve's cheek and then lays his cheek against his. His thumb sweeps under the head of Steve's cock as he twists his palm, and each steady stroke is the sweetest torture. "Let me show you now, huh?"

Steve pressed his face tighter to Bucky's neck. Instinct was driving him to pull away, to send Bucky out, to keep him from having to do this. But he thought about it, if their positions were reversed, if he'd seen Bucky like this, and he pushed his hips against Bucky's. "Please," he whispered.

"Hey." Bucky nudged at him until he turned his face so he could kiss him. Then he was nuzzling at the hinge of his jaw and kissing the hot skin of his neck. His hand kept moving, slow and steady, the perfect pressure, the sweep of his thumb under the wet head of his cock.

Steve's grip on Bucky's hip and in his hair tightened. "Please, Buck."

"I'm here, Steve. I have you." Bucky wrapped his arm around Steve and slid it up his back, until he was crushing him close.

It was quiet, just the sound of the beating shower punctuated by the slick sound of Bucky's hand on Steve's cock, and by their breathing, and--when Steve came, hips stuttering, spilling over Bucky's hand--Steve's impossibly soft sobs.

And despite his best effort, he couldn't stop. The tears kept coming long after his cock stopped leaking, and his knees tried to give out on him. He tried to pitch to the side, toward the wall. Bucky was the hurt one, the one who needed, Steve was just-- He shouldn't have been--

"Hey." Bucky ran his hand down Steve's back and shifted him back against him. He ran his fingers through Steve's hair. "You wanna tell me what's wrong? Can you?"

Steve just shook his head.

"Yeah. Thought so." Bucky wrapped both arms around him and held him. "Why'd you let it get so bad, huh?" He kissed the side of Steve's head.

Steve breathed in deep. He pressed his face to Bucky's neck. "You were the only one I ever wanted, Buck."

"Well then why didn't you just say that, dummy? And you're supposed to be the brains of the operation." Bucky pulled him closer, away from the spray. "You wanna get out? Water's getting cold."

It wasn't, it would never get cold. The never-ending hot water supply was one of the best things about living in Avengers tower. But Steve pulled away, anyway, and he shut off the water. The distance between them gave Steve the chance to put himself back together, or at least to try.

He sniffled. "Thanks, Buck," he said.

"Hold on there, buddy." Bucky put a hand on his shoulder, briefly, gave it a squeeze and waited for Steve to look at him. "We aren't done here. We're just moving this to a more comfortable venue, yeah?"

The naked hope Steve felt must have shown on his face because Bucky winced.

"Jesus, you're in bad shape. Did anyone take care of you? Did you even  _ask_ ?"

Steve turned away and reached for the towels in the built-in shelf next to the open shower.

"It's a good thing they're all dead. They are all dead, right? Or at least really really old? Maybe in homes?"

Steve laughed. It was watery but it was a laugh and that was a victory. He handed Bucky one of the the oversized towels and wrapped another around his waist. Might as well 'fess up now, he thought. "There've been some since I woke up."

"'Course there have, you always were a dog." Bucky grabbed another towel on his way out of the shower and used it on his hair. "I don't mind if  _they're_ not dead, they didn't know better. Probably had stars in their eyes.  _'Ooh, Captain America, he sure packs a wallop.'_ "

Steve made a face. "Buck, come on."

"You covered that for me." He grinned.

Steve had missed that grin. Missed it like an organ, or a-- a limb. 

_Well that was in bad taste, Rogers._

Bucky raised an eyebrow. "What is it? You've got that look on your face."

"What look?"

"That look that says you thought something stupid and you're beating yourself up over it."

_God_ , he'd missed Bucky. Steve looked down, at his hands on the edge of the towel tucked around his waist, and he thought of laughing it off, but they'd gone long enough not saying what they really meant, hadn't they? So he said quietly, "I was just thinking I missed your smile like I'd miss an arm if I lost it."

There was a moment of tense silence between them. Steve thought he could hear the echo of his heartbeat.

Then Bucky threw a towel at his head. "Fuck you."

But he was laughing. And so was Steve. He pulled the towel off his face and threw it back. "You asked!"

"You really are a jerk sometimes." He was grinning, though.

Steve grinned back. "Learned it from you."

"No, you didn't." Bucky scrubbed at his hair with the towel. "I was a nice guy. I was  _nice_ . Even to the fellas who weren't so nice--"

Steve snorted. Bucky hadn't been nice, he'd been graceful and efficient. "Even when you were kicking their asses?"

"Damn right." Bucky pulled the towel off his head and held it in both hands, and the way he looked at Steve changed the atmosphere one more time. "You wanna talk about what happened in there?" He nodded back toward the shower.

Steve glanced at the shower, big and harmless-looking, and then looked back at Bucky. "No. You gonna make me?"

"Nah. Twisting your arm would probably just lead to a wrestling match or something, and it's too damn late for that. I'm an old man now."

Steve laughed.

Bucky smiled at him. It was a different smile, one Steve had seen in the war a lot, small and soft. He said, "How about if we just go back to bed, and you stay with me this time?"

Steve nodded. He could do that.

Bucky went on, voice a little firmer, "And next time we do what we do, you don't run off. Stick around. Goes both ways. From now on."

Steve's heart tried to climb up into his throat.

Bucky's expression went serious. "I mean it, Steve. It goes both ways."

He half-smiled even as he felt the heat at the back of his eyes. "It always did, Buck."


End file.
